Faculty Members
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TANAKA, Masatoshi Professor |
| Main Areas of Research | Germanic Linguistics, grammatical theories, Grammaticalization |
| Self-Introduction | My initial research topic was word order in modern German. In German, there is a strong rule that the finite verb must appear in the second position in main clauses. However, questioning why the verb must be in the second position led me to focus on the first element of the sentence, that is, the sentence-initial position. Originally, German had rich inflectional morphology, but as it developed a fixed initial stress accent, the endings—where inflectional morphology had been rich—were weakened. As a result, there arose a need to support these weakened morphological forms through syntactic position, leading to the establishment of a fixed word order. In this way, the grammatical rules of modern German have evolved through historical changes. I am particularly interested in research that unravels various aspects of grammar from a historical perspective. |
